Burlap

“ He had seen me fall before the dyryth, and then he had been seized by a number of the ape-creatures and borne through the tree tops to their village. His captors had been as inquisitive as to his strange clothing as had mine, with the same result. As we looked at each other we could not help but laugh.
"With a tail, David," remarked Perry, "you would make a very handsome ape."
"Maybe we can borrow a couple," I rejoined. "They seem to be quite the thing this season. I wonder what the creatures intend doing with us, Perry. They don't seem really savage. What do you suppose they can be? ”

“ Being pretty plentiful where they are found at all, and as a rule, where not much shot at, fairly easy to approach, a visitor to Ladak, if he works at all, must indeed have been behind the door when the luck was served out if he cannot get a few burrel heads. Ordinarily they are found on fairly broken ground, and usually not very far away from rocky cliffs of some sort; they are capital climbers, no sheep better, and a wounded ram is by no means an easy beast to recover. If a burrel had only the horns of an ibex he would be the most charming beast to hunt in the whole of the Himalayas. ”

“ We had no difficulty in finding my lair, and then I went down into the valley and bowled over a small antelope, which I dragged up the steep ascent to the ledge before the door. Here we ate in silence. Occasionally I glanced at her, thinking that the sight of her tearing at raw flesh with her hands and teeth like some wild animal would cause a revulsion of my sentiments toward her; but to my surprise I found that she ate quite as daintily as the most civilized woman of my acquaintance, and finally I found myself gazing in foolish rapture at the beauties of her strong, white teeth. ”

“ It happily consumes those provisions and, in time, an oil-beetle crawls out of the tunnel a mining-bee so laboriously prepared.
Burl had no difficulty in detaching the small insect and casting it away, but in doing so he discovered that others had hidden themselves in his fur without his knowledge. He plucked them away and found more. While savages can be highly tolerant of vermin too small to be seen, they feel a peculiar revolt against serving as host to creatures of sensible size. Burl reacted violently—as once he had reacted to the discovery of a leech clinging to his heel. ”

“ The female fish is usually the larger and stronger, and perhaps better able to take the lead; among most reptiles the same fact holds, and throughout the insect world there is to my knowledge no exception to the rule. Among the birds, the only exception I am aware of is in the case of the birds of prey. Here the female is the larger and stronger. If you see an exceptionally large and powerful eagle, rest assured the sex is feminine. But higher in the scale the male comes to the front and leads in size and strength.
But the first familiar spring birds are cocks ”

“ Every instant I expected a tiger to bound upon me from the jungle at the side of the road, a cobra to dart out its ugly head from the overhanging branch of a tree, or a body of dacoits to pounce down upon me and carry me off to their lair in triumph. My mind was filled with useless speculation as to whether I and my bicycle would be swifter than a panther, and with what "honeyed words of wisdom" I should best allay the wrath of the "Burman run amuck," should fate throw one of these in my way. ”

“ My friend has a dozen or more burros, and the burro is another of the blessings of this world for which I possess unlimited love. Their patient and melancholy looking eyes will excite the sympathy of any human save the miner; their ears are a mystery; their song!—Oh for a bard to string his lyre and sing in poetic numbers his praises of the burro’s song! I have sometimes thought the burro the Pegasus of some of our Colorado poets, but that they shunned their source of inspiration ”

“ On the other hand the quantity of ruminants and the variety and frequency of carnivorous animals increased. Each square mile of Caspak harbored its terrors.
At intervals along the way I found bits of muslin, and often they reassured me when otherwise I should have been doubtful of the trail to take where two crossed or where there were forks, as occurred at several points. And so, as night was drawing on, I came to the southern end of a line of cliffs loftier than any I had seen before, and as I approached them, there was wafted to my nostrils the pungent aroma of woodsmoke. ”

“ What'll 'e du now, I wonder? [Under her breath] 'E's cumin'!
[She goes hurriedly. BURLACOMBE, with a startled look back, wavers and makes to follow her, but stops undecided in the inner doorway. STRANGWAY comes in from the darkness. He turns to the window and drops overcoat and hat and the church key on the windowseat, looking about him as men do when too hard driven, and never fixing his eyes long enough on anything to see it. BURLACOMBE, closing the door into the house, advances a step. At the sound STRANGWAY faces round.] ”

“ Not all the insect world was so helpless or so unthreatening. Burl knew of wasps almost the length of his own body who possessed stings that were instantly fatal. To every species of wasp, however, some other insect is predestined prey, and the furtive members of Burl's tribe feared them but little as they sought only the prey to which their instinct led them. ”

“ He left the nest and clung to the outer bole of the tree, and yelped and piped for an hour longer; then he committed himself to his wings and went his way like the rest.
The matchmaking of the high-holes, which often comes under my observation, is in marked contrast to that of the robins and the bluebirds. There does not appear to be any anger or any blows. The male or two males will alight on a limb in front of the female, and go through [26] with a series of bowings and scrapings that are truly comical. ”

“ Copewell. “If you only knew her!”
“I don’t,” snapped Mr. Burrow back at him, “but I know her sex. I know that women differ from other birds of prey in only one particular and the distinction is in favor of the other birds of prey.”
“That’s a lie, of course, but I haven’t time to argue it.”
“The difference is,” calmly pursued Mr. Burrow, “that the others wear their own feathers. Women wear those of the others.”
The office door opened. The head of the young woman stenographer appeared. Her voice was chilling. ”

“ Burlesque must, burlarsi di uno, mock at somebody or something, and when intended to give pleasure it is nothing if not good-natured. One etymologist associates the word with the old English ‘bourd,’ a jest; the Gaelic ‘burd,’ he says, means mockery, and ‘buirleadh,’ is language of ridicule. Yes, and ‘burrail’ is the loud romping of children, and ‘burrall’ is weeping and wailing in a deep-toned howl. Another etymologist takes the Italian ‘burla,’ waggery or banter, as diminutive from the Latin ‘burra,’ which means a rough hair, but is used by Ausonius in the sense of a jest. ”

“ It was a mighty good discipline for the flax; it straightened out its fibres and made it as clear and straight as a girl's tresses. Out of the tow we twisted bag strings, flail strings, and other strings. With the worthless portions we made huge bonfires. The flax, Mother would mass upon her distaff and spin into threads. The last I saw of the old crackle, fifty or more years ago, it served as a hen roost under the shed, and the savage old hetchel was doing duty behind the old churner when he sulked and pulled back so as to stop the churning machine. ”

“ For no sooner does a European appear riding in his pride by the river bed, where the water buffalo lies wallowing in the mud, than all the worst passions awake in [Pg 185] the breast of the afore mentioned water buffalo, and he is instantly aroused to anger. He leaves the delights of the mud bath, and starts in pursuit of the white face, no matter who he may be. "Tell it not in Gath" but the water buffalo, being no respector of persons, has even been known to put to ignominious flight the "Indian Civilian" and the "Bombay Burman." ”

“ A collar of short horns encircled its neck just where it joined the head. They pointed slightly forward. There must have been a dozen of them. I could not but wonder what their specific purpose might be until I recalled the vere from whose horrible maw I had so recently escaped. That necklace of short horns would most certainly have discouraged any creature that was in the habit of swallowing its prey whole.
Very gently, I pushed Duare behind a tree and crept forward, fitting an arrow to my bow. As I was preparing to shoot, the creature threw up its head and turned half around. ”

“ He remembered also that mole which had so inexplicably evaded him. Keeping close to the fence, he hurried back to the stone heap, on the other side of which lay the entrance to the burrows. He was just about to make a hurried and final investigation of the pile, when his nose caught a strong scent which made him stop short and seem to shrink into his skin. At the same instant a slim, long, yellow-brown animal emerged from the stones, cast a quick, shifting glance this way and that, then darted at him as smoothly as a snake. ”

“ Farmer Bluff laughed outright. "An inquest on a goose!" roared he. "Upon my soul, young master, you're an original; though, when you come to look at it, half the inquests are on geese. He! he!—" And he laughed again at his own wit.
But Hal was quite in earnest. To him there was nothing funny in it at all. "There always is a post-mortem," said he seriously, "when anybody dies without the doctor being able to tell the cause of death. I think that if I were you, I should like to know why that goose died. It might enable you to prevent any more of them dying the same way, you know. ”

“ Presently we—for I have been joined by a companion—discover the bird, a male, insecting in the top of a newly fallen hemlock. The black, white, and blue of his uniform [101] are seen at a glance. His movements are quite slow compared with some of the warblers. If he will only betray the locality of that little domicile where his plainly clad mate is evidently sitting, it is all we will ask of him. But this he seems in no wise disposed to do. Here and there, and up and down, we follow him, often losing him, and as often refinding him by his song; but the clew to his nest, how shall we get it? ”

“ A FEW hours later, Bill had made acquaintance with one of the narrow beds in the accident ward of the Riverbridge Infirmary, where—after going through the exhausting process of having his clothes removed, and his leg put in splints—he fell asleep and dreamt all sorts of extraordinary things. Amongst others, that the Squire had caught him stealing eggs in the hay, and had him nailed out on a flat board—like the stoats on the lower boarding of the barn; and that when he tried to get away, Farmer Bluff's dog came and barked at him. ”

“ A stranger why will you despise?
The gods and goddesses are presented in "Midas" in a light more or less ludicrous, and the dialogue, songs, and [Pg 45] choruses are flavoured with contemporary allusion, more or less humorous. But the form given to the work is that of the old-fashioned burletta. Indeed, the chief merit of "Midas," from a historical point of view, lies in the fact that it was its successful revival, with Mme. Vestris as Apollo, which, coupled with the publication of Colman junior's story, "The Sun-Poker," suggested to Planché the composition of his first "classical" burlesque. ”

“ My horse loves me like a dog. I am very happy to believe it, Mr. Burleson.”
From the luminous shadow of her sombrero she looked out across the stretch of marsh, where from unseen pools the wild-duck were rising, disturbed by the sound of their approach. And now the snipe began to dart skyward from under their horses’ feet, filling the noon silence with their harsh “squak! squak!”
“It’s along here somewhere,” said Burleson, leaning forward in his saddle to scan the swale-grass. A moment later he said, “Look there, Miss Elliott!” ”

“ I see the head of a burro lookin' in the car door, inquirin' and sleepy. Somehow, I allus want to laugh when I look a burro in the face, he's that simple and unassumin' and 'Have-you-used-Pear's-soap?' lookin', but I don't do it, because I know he's got me sized up, proper, and has divined all my weaknesses and secret faults and is criticizing me from my number twelve feet to my number six hat. ”

“ He affiliates as readily with the Mexican and the Indian as he does with the whites. The desert tribes have little success with horses, and even the rugged bronchos cannot endure the heat and thirst incident to life in that region, but the burro is as much at home and seemingly as contented there as are his brethren who live and labor in the alfalfa meadows of the fertile belt.
The burro is never vicious. Unlike his cousin, the mule, he knows no guile. As a playmate for children he has no rival. He humors them, bears with them, and lets them work their own sweet wills with him. ”

“ With a cry so frightful, so bestial, that it momentarily paralyzed the startled Dango, the great ape launched his mighty bulk upon the surprised hyena. With a cry and a snarl, Dango, crushed to earth, turned to tear at his assailant; but as effectively might a sparrow turn upon a hawk. Taug's great, gnarled fingers closed upon the hyena's throat and back, his jaws snapped once on the mangy neck, crushing the vertebrae, and then he hurled the dead body contemptuously aside.
Again he raised his voice in the call of the bull ape to its mate, but there was no reply ”

“ Burl led the rush to the spot. They did battle with a monster nocturnal beetle, less chilled than most such invaders. In the gray dawnlight Burl realized that the darting, yapping dogs kept the creature's full attention. He crippled, and then killed it with his spear. The feat appeared to earn him warm admiration from the dogs. Burl wore a moth's feathery antenna again, bound to his forehead like a knight's plumes. He looked very splendid.
The entire pattern of human life changed swiftly, as if an entire revelation had been granted to men. The ground was often thorny. One man pierced his foot. ”